The Meek Will Inherit the Earth Tomorrow and Impact the World Today

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)

In his classic work on the Sermon on the Mount, D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones contrasts the weakness of powerful organization and the power of spiritual meekness. On this Lord’s Day, consider which you are seeking:

But further, this Beatitude comes, alas, in the form of a very striking contrast to much thinking within the Christian Church at the present time. For is there not a rather pathetic tendency to think in terms of fighting the world, and sin, and the things that are opposed to Christ, by means of great organizations? Am I wrong when I suggest that the controlling and prevailing thought of the Christian Church throughout the world seems to be the very opposite of what is indicated in this text? ‘There’, they say, ‘is the powerful enemy set against us, and here is the divided Christian Church. We must all get together, we must have one huge organization to face that organized enemy. Then we shall make an impact, and then we shall conquer.’ But ‘Blessed are the meek’, not those who trust to their own organizing, not those who trust to their own powers and abilities and their own institutions. Rather it is the very reverse of that. And this is true, not only here, but in the whole message of the Bible. You get it in that perfect story of Gideon where God went on reducing the numbers, not adding to them. That is the spiritual method, and here it is once more emphasized in this amazing statement in the Sermon on the Mount. (Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 53)

May we pray for and pursue meekness, that we might lay hold of our inheritance, and God might work his power through our surrendered, ready lives.